


Silver Bells and Cockle Shells

by viceindustrious



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-19
Updated: 2011-06-19
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:15:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious/pseuds/viceindustrious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver Bells and Cockle Shells

There's a secret, shameful thing growing inside him and every day Coward finds he must stack the walls of his garden high, high, higher to hide its blossoms. Full to bursting, ripening lush in photo negative under the sunless, starless sky of his soul, this furtive love of beauty. 

Of the beauty of men. 

There is a copy of _Lippincott's Magazine_ he keeps sandwiched between the pages of a sturdy old leather atlas in his study. There is nothing damnable about the thing in itself, but the thought of someone catching him with it makes him shudder. He imagines they may see it, the edges of the pages furred with use, half falling to pieces, see it and see  _him_. 

Oh many men have read the story, Coward doesn't doubt it. What he dares not wonder is if any felt it pierce them as utterly, heart forced into their throats, terrified to read on yet unable to stop. Pierced, yes, pierced and . . . and violated, their worst truths laid out before their eyes. 

How can Wilde paint such horror from a palette of flower petals? It is not Dorian's end that makes him shiver, but his beginning. It feels like a message written in a code for Coward alone, a second meaning welling up from between page and print like blood from a wound. 

The first time he read  _The Picture of Dorian Gray,_ Coward threw the magazine away in a panic and then spent the rest of the week sick to his stomach,  _sickening_ in truth. Waking from ill remembered dreams to sticky sheets until, so weak, he gave in to his disease. Paying for a second copy, too flustered to remember his change and already halfway down the road when the seller called after him. 

What he does could barely be called reading, he knows the words off by heart. He lays in his bed and spreads his thighs, lets his fingers play with the hair that grows below his belly button. The magazine in one hand, folded over itself, conjuring up the scent of a vibrant garden. A garden heavy with warmth like the hot, thick rush of blood that fills his cock, humid like his breath when he turns his face against the pillow, panting. 

The words on the page blur together as he imagines himself in Dorian's place, walking through flowerbeds drowsy with perfume. Henry Wotton walks beside him, tall, dark and powerful. Such a man as perhaps Coward has seen before, whose name might sound the same when whispered from a begging tongue. 

The sentence glows across this daydreamed, dazzling sky;  _your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself._

Coward bites at his lip and rests his hand on the full throb of his cock, suffering for touch, so sensitive, so ready, such a filthy, wicked thing. He grinds it down against his stomach with the heel of his palm and whimpers through his teeth. 

In the magazine the story continues but in Coward's garden, he touches Henry's arm and murmurs, blushing,  _yes_.

Licks his lips and leaves his mouth half open, shining and wet and asks to be shown, asks for instruction. There Henry would look at him, look _into_ him and step closer and ask him, what? How does he  _desire_ to be instructed? Closer, closer, pinning him back against a tree, forcing him to tip his head up, forcing him to bare his throat, forcing the words from him.

 _Anything. Please. Teach me, show me, take me. **Take me**.  
_  
He rolls onto his stomach and stuffs a pillow between his legs, squirming against it until he spends himself, imagining the strong thigh of another man there instead. Ruts against it, whining, until the pleasure becomes pain, the cotton rough against the glassy, slick head of his cock. Light flashes behind his eyes like a blaze of laburnum. 

Then he is alone. Cold and spattered with his sin. 

There's a secret, shameful thing growing inside him and every day Coward finds the walls of his garden are crumbling, falling faster than he can mend them. Under the sunless, starless sky of his soul, his roses blossom white and pallid. He thinks, perhaps, that someone has seen him. Tall and dark and powerful, his tongue knows that name.

It will only take one touch for Henry to paint his flowers crimson.


End file.
